Okay, so today I wanted to mess around and make a simple cartoon-style volleyball game. I’ve always liked the idea of super basic sports games, you know, the kind you can just pick up and play.
First, I grabbed a free cartoon character model online. There are tons of these things floating around, so it wasn’t hard to find one that looked kinda sporty and fun. Then, I needed a volleyball. Easy enough, I just created a simple sphere in my game engine and slapped a white texture on it. Looked good enough for what I was going for!
Setting up the Court
Next, I built a basic court. Just a flat plane for the ground, and then I added some lines to mark the boundaries and the net. I didn’t go crazy with detail – just enough so you could tell it was a volleyball court.
Basic Movement
Getting the character to move was the next step. I rigged up some simple controls: arrow keys for left and right, spacebar to jump. Nothing fancy, just wanted to get the basics working. Then I added some basic physics so the character would fall back down after jumping. Gravity, gotta have it!
Hitting the Ball
- I spent a bit of time figuring out how to make the character hit the ball. I ended up using a simple collision check.
- Basically, when the ball gets close enough to the character, and the player presses a button (I used the “Z” key), the ball gets a force applied to it, sending it flying in the opposite direction.
- It took some tweaking to get the force just right, so it didn’t feel too weak or too powerful.
Simple AI
I wanted to have at least a little bit of a challenge, so I added a very basic AI opponent. This “opponent” just moves left and right randomly and jumps occasionally. It’s not going to win any awards for intelligence, but it’s enough to make the game somewhat playable.
Scoring (Kind Of)
I added a super rudimentary scoring system. If the ball hits the ground on one side of the court, the other side gets a point. I didn’t even bother displaying the score on the screen yet – I just printed it to the console for debugging. Baby steps, right?
So, that’s where I’m at! It’s a super rough, super simple cartoon volleyball game, but it’s kind of fun to mess around with. I can definitely see myself adding more to it later – maybe some power-ups, different characters, and a proper scoring display. But for now, it’s a good starting point!
